Want to Succeed? You Should Seriously Consider Doing Nothing

If you want to motivate yourself to keep doing something, rather than getting lazy and copping out, here’s an idea: Make “do nothing” one of the choices you present yourself with.

The reason, according to a study by University of Pennsylvania marketing professor Rom Y. Schrift and Georgia State University marketing professor Jeffrey R. Parker, is that adding in the do-nothing choice makes us more likely to persevere in what we set out to do.

For instance, if you plan to start working out and join Gym A or Gym B, add in the option of not joining any gym at all.

Puzzling? “It sounds counterintuitive because we assume that the option of doing nothing reduces persistence,” Schrift tells Knowledge@Wharton. “However, if I choose something, I learn about my preferences. Just knowing that fact helps us persist longer when there’s adversity or hardship.”

Peter Drucker would surely have agreed that giving yourself the option of doing nothing can be clarifying. In particular, it can help you figure out what the decision is really about, a topic we’ve addressed before. Gym A or Gym B may really be a decision about how much to work out, for example.

And sometimes, in fact, “there are those conditions with respect to which one can, without being unduly optimistic, expect that they will take care of themselves even if nothing is done.” That’s why Drucker advised, “If the answer to the question ‘What will happen if we do nothing?’ is ‘It will take care of itself,’ one does not interfere.”